High Blocking Temperature of Magnetization and Giant Coercivity in the Azafullerene Tb2@C79N with a Single‐Electron Terbium–Terbium Bond

The azafullerene Tb₂@C₇₉N is found to be a single‐molecule magnet with a high 100‐s blocking temperature of magnetization of 24 K and large coercivity. Tb magnetic moments with an easy‐axis single‐ion magnetic anisotropy are strongly coupled by the unpaired spin of the single‐electron Tb?Tb bond. Relaxation of magnetization in Tb₂@C₇₉N below 15 K proceeds via quantum tunneling of magnetization with the characteristic time τ_QTM=16 462±1230 s. At higher temperature, relaxation follows the Orbach mechanism with a barrier of 757±4 K, corresponding to the excited states, in which one of the Tb spins is flipped.     

Photoinitiated polymerization of methacrylates comprising phenyl moieties

Investigation of photopolymerization kinetics of 4-(4-methacryloyloxyphenyl)-butan-2-one (1) in comparison with 2-phenoxyethyl methacrylate (2) and phenyl methacrylate (3) using a UV-LED emitting at 395 nm shows significantly faster polymerization of 1 compared to both 2 and 3 at 40°C. Vitrification affects photopolymerization kinetics of all methacrylates under investigation. Interestingly, quantitative final conversion is observed during photoinitiated polymerization of 1 and 2 whereas 3 shows limited conversion at about 80%. Furthermore, higher degree of polymerization is obtained by photoinitiated polymerization of 1 compared to 2 and 3. This shows that the 3-oxobutyl substituent at the phenyl ring of 1 significantly affects both polymerization kinetics and final conversion of the photoinitiated polymerization. Moreover, an additional higher molecular weight fraction is observed in case of polymerization of 1 at 85°C that is above the glass transition temperature of the polymer formed during photoinitiated polymerization. As a thermal polymerization at 85°C in the absence of light results in a high molecular weight polymer as well, an additional thermal process may be discussed as reason for the higher molecular weight polymer fraction in case of the photopolymer made at 85°C.     

NIR Light-Induced ATRP for Synthesis of Block Copolymers Comprising UV-Absorbing Moieties

NIR exposure at 790 nm activated photopolymerization of monomers comprising UV-absorbing moieties by using [Cu^II/(TPMA)]Br₂ (TPMA=tris(2-pyridylmethyl)amine) in the ppm range and an alkyl bromide as initiator. Some of them comprised structural elements selected either from those showing proton transfer or photocycloaddition upon UV excitation. Polymers obtained comprise living end groups serving as macroinitiator for controlled synthesis of block copolymers with relatively narrow molecular weight distributions. Chromatographic results indicated formation of block copolymers produced by this synthetic approach. Free-radical polymerization of monomers pursued for comparison exhibited the expected broader dispersity of molecular weight compared to photo-ATRP. Polymerization of these monomers by UV photo-ATRP failed on the contrary to NIR photo-ATRP demonstrating the UV-filter function of the monomers. This work conclusively provides a new approach for the polymerization of monomers comprising UV-absorbing moieties through photo-ATRP in the NIR region. This occurred in a simple and efficient pathway. However, studies also showed that not all monomers chosen successfully proceeded in the NIR photo-ATRP protocol.     

Highly Conjugated π-Systems Arising from Cannibalistic Hexadehydro-Diels–Alder Couplings: Cleavage of C−C Single and Triple Bonds

We have investigated the cannibalistic self-trapping reaction of an ortho-benzyne derivative generated from 1,11-bis(p-tolyl)undeca-1,3,8,10-tetrayne in an HDDA reaction. Without adding any specific trapping agent, the highly reactive benzyne is trapped by another bisdiyne molecule in at least three different modes. We have isolated and characterized the resulting products and performed high-level calculations concerning the reaction mechanism. During the cannibalistic self-trapping process, either a C≡C triple bond or an sp–sp³ C−C single bond is cleaved. Up to seven rings and nine C−C bonds are formed starting from two 1,11-bis(p-tolyl)undeca-1,3,8,10-tetrayne molecules. Our experiments and calculations provide considerable insight into the variety of reaction pathways which the ortho-benzyne derivative, generated from a bisdiyne, can take when reacting with another bisdiyne molecule.     

Crystal Structure of LiRh-type IrZn Determined by Powder X-ray and Selected Area Electron Diffraction

The LiRh-type crystal structure of the equiatomic intermetallic compound IrZn turns out to be a competitor to the otherwise energetically favored CsCl-type structures of congeneric transition metal zinc phases, thus enlightening the structural impact of element-specific factors beyond the Hume-Rothery concept.     

A discontinuous Galerkin immersed boundary solver for compressible flows: Adaptive local time stepping for artificial viscosity–based shock-capturing on cut cells

We present a higher-order cut cell immersed boundary method (IBM) for the simulation of high Mach number flows. As a novelty on a cut cell grid, we evaluate an adaptive local time stepping (LTS) scheme in combination with an artificial viscosity–based shock-capturing approach. The cut cell grid is optimized by a nonintrusive cell agglomeration strategy in order to avoid problems with small or ill-shaped cut cells. Our approach is based on a discontinuous Galerkin discretization of the compressible Euler equations, where the immersed boundary is implicitly defined by the zero isocontour of a level set function. In flow configurations with high Mach numbers, a numerical shock-capturing mechanism is crucial in order to prevent unphysical oscillations of the polynomial approximation in the vicinity of shocks. We achieve this by means of a viscous smoothing where the artificial viscosity follows from a modal decay sensor that has been adapted to the IBM. The problem of the severe time step restriction caused by the additional second-order diffusive term and small nonagglomerated cut cells is addressed by using an adaptive LTS algorithm. The robustness, stability, and accuracy of our approach are verified for several common test cases. Moreover, the results show that our approach lowers the computational costs drastically, especially for unsteady IBM problems with complex geometries.     

Editorial

JPC – Journal of Planar Chromatography – Modern TLC -